


before you go (was there something that i could have said to make your heart beat better?)

by inklovish



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Musicals, Rants, Sailing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23527003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklovish/pseuds/inklovish
Summary: She's put the world's weight on her shoulders and you expect her to carry it like a champ? She's a teenager, actually. She can't do that all the time.
Relationships: Maui & Moana Waialiki, Moana Waialiki & Sina Waialiki & Tala Waialiki & Tui Waialiki, Moana Waialiki & Tala Waialiki, Ocean & Moana Waialiki, Te Fiti & Moana Waialiki
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	before you go (was there something that i could have said to make your heart beat better?)

**Author's Note:**

> a rant at four in the morning about this one Reddit review because insult every other Disney movie all you want but Moana was storytelling _excellence_ don't @ me--
> 
> It's also, really, a character study. Because sometimes I forget how young these characters actually are, and Moana is no exception.

I saw a Reddit review of Moana that said something along the lines of this: "she never had doubt in herself until the _I am Moana_ scene. it was kind of forced." Which I have two immediate responses to: One, she's literally a sixteen-year-old, and two, did you really expect said sixteen-year-old to take the Heart of Te Fiti, drag Maui across the ocean, and force him to restore the Heart without fault or mistakes or messing up? _I think not._

Because listen: Moana is probably three when the Ocean chooses her. She's raised to be a chief of her tribe, to take care of her people and put her people's needs first. She's raised to be strong and confident and stubborn, just like her father. She's _sixteen_ when she realizes that the three-year-old Being Chosen Thing was real, and she can _feel_ the ocean calling her when her father drags her out of the meeting hut. When her grandmother is on her deathbed she tells Moana to _go_ and so Moana pushes on. She takes the little boat from the caverns and takes her grandmother with her--she has a mission, and she will carry that mission out.

When she's on her own (okay, Hei Hei's there too) it's still there; that energy and spark living at the tips of her fingers. She has a mission. She will carry that mission out, manhandle Maui, and he will restore the heart of Te Fiti--and then everything will be fixed, and maybe (she's a little hopeful and a whole lot stubborn) they won't have to hide from the ocean anymore.

And then she meets Maui, who, _wow,_ a huge grump and an egotist, but she gets used to it quickly--you get more comfortable with things when you're not alone on a boat and you don't have to talk to a chicken that keeps trying to _drown itself._

Moana's just found out that her ancestors were voyagers, and she's angry at her father, and her grandmother has just _died_ \--but she keeps moving. Literally. You can't stay still on a boat in the middle of the ocean, so she keeps moving, keeps pushing forward, because if she doesn't get Maui to do this then her village, and everyone else's--other families and friendly pigs and insane birds--they're all doomed. But there's, there's no _buildup,_ you say?

So she talks to Maui about his hook. She offers for him to return the heart of Te Fiti in exchange for his hook and the love of the people, and he's sold. She thinks it's sad--that a demigod of the wind and sea, an immortal, is left unloved for what he's done and might just still be left that way, but everything will turn out _fine._ Everything will turn out fine and Maui will get his babies named after him and Moana will get her freedom and this--this is really best-case scenario here. She has a mission; she will carry it out. She fights hard and works harder and learns how to wayfind, fights an army of talking coconuts, steals a hook from a lobster, and soon she feels like she's in a dream--a _voyager,_ she feels like a voyager and an independent woman for the first time in her life and it feels a lot like freedom.

And then Te Ka happens.

Te Ka happens and this? _This_ is worst case scenario. Maui's fishhook is no match for molten lava in the shape of a god, and Moana is no match for _a god,_ period, but she pushes (she has a mission. she has a mission. she will carry it out) and _tries_ to go farther, and before they get a chance to regroup, they're blown away on mournful waves and the sound of things shattering.

"The ocean chose _me,_ " she chokes out, desperate and hanging onto these words and scared and disbelieving because she was prepared for thar, _prepared_ for the battle, but she never expected to _lose._

"Well, it chose wrong," Maui bites back, reminding her suddenly that he's not mortal but he's a demigod and he's carved his reputation and his name out of broken bones and drowned screams. And he leaps into the air, and he leaves.

Which Moana supposes she deserves. It doesn't take a genius to see precautions they could have used and other methods they could have done instead. She was impulsive, brash, recklessly confident, infuriatingly bossy even though she hadn't the slightest idea what she was doing, and yes, she made _plenty_ of mistakes. She's _sixteen._ She's pushed herself here, she thought she was going to make it and instead she failed, and everything _chief-like_ in her is grieving.

She's put the world's weight on her shoulders and you expect her to carry it like a champ? She's a teenager, actually. She can't do that all the time. She can _distract_ herself from it, with the natural heady thrill of near-death and learning how to voyage, but when Maui is gone, that means she's alone. And when she's alone, she remembers that she's Atlas.

Have you ever been on vacation before? A feeling I've witnessed on long trips is first the being exhilarated and excited by everything that there is to _do_ and _see,_ that's the kind of thrill that seems to follow Moana as she's learning and trying not to die and trying not to let Hei Hei die, _that's_ her distraction. And when she lets go of that distraction--she misses home. She misses the sense of it, at least, the solid ground beneath her feet and the gentle voice of her mother and the steady hand of her father and--oh!--her grandmother's _beautiful_ stories.

So she's felt the thrill of adventure. And, as it goes when you're sixteen years old and far away from home with no knowledge of whether your family is dead or alive--this, now, here on this boat as Maui streaks crookedly away and the ocean rises up in front of her, Moana is _homesick_ for the first time for something familiar and something that stirs up that fierce warmth that her grandmother was always able to tend to properly.

"Choose someone else," she says, _cries,_ feeling her hands shake and her voice tremble as she holds out the Heart. " _Please."_

The ocean takes the Heart, and it sinks into its depths with an air of finality. Moana can't bear to look any longer, and so she falls and kneels and cries, because the weight of the world when she's so far from home is _far_ too much weight to put on one sixteen-year-old. She isn't--a leader or chief or a protector of the people, she's no savior, she can't save the world on her own, she's being pulled so quickly away from home that it feels mostly like a fever _dream--_

"I'm sorry," she apologizes, tears still streaking down her cheeks, as she looks at a ghost and holds onto the warmth that her grandmother looks at her with. "I can't do it."

And then her grandmother says her name, says _Moana's name,_ and--Moana remembers.

"I am a girl who loves my island," she says to her grandmother when she asks who she is, "and a girl who loves the sea--"

 _it calls you,_ like the way that the birds call for food and her parents call her name whenever she disappears again. _you are the daughter of the village chief, and you are descended from voyagers who found their way across the world with boats and the stars and their shining eyes, you are bright and beautiful and strong and courageous, you are--_

Moana.

And that's the beautiful thing about it, really, is that Moana spends this time trying to be a Savior, a perfect person, the Hero that saves the world without needing help or sidekicks or advice. But that's not who _she_ is.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, leave a kudos down there wherever the Kudos button is and I hope you enjoyed reading this.


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